ARTIST NEWS

Wildly different works fall together well

New Yorkers love culture, and we love a bargain even more. Combine them and you get Fall for Dance: five programs, 20 groups and each ticket only 10 bucks. No wonder it always sells out.

There’s a different program every two days, including New York City Ballet and Alvin Ailey at the finale.

Bouncing from hip-hop to ballet, the offerings can feel like multiple personalities. But at Thursday’s opening night, four very different works came together looking even better than they might have apart.

Mark Morris’ “All Fours” set two enigmatic couples in gray against a black-clad crowd in movement as tensely wound as the Bartok string quartet played live.

Switching gears entirely was break dancer Lil Buck’s version of “The Swan,” a brief tour de force as sensational as the original ballet was for Anna Pavlova. Moonwalks and slow balances on the tip of a sneaker equated uncannily with pointe work.

Two men moved side by side through glowing darkness in Trisha Brown’s “Rogues,” set to a recorded score by Alvin Curran that sounded like distant bells and the buzzing of bees. The duo’s deceptively simple and loose style filled the dance with meditative beauty.

The program closed with the Joffrey Ballet, whose dancers gave Edwaard Liang’s “Woven Dreams” an otherworldly atmosphere. Victoria Jaiani led the company with focused intensity as she extended her legs like a heron and seemed to conjure the twilight world onstage out of her own imagination.

The continuous slow motion in the ballet linked it to the gentle rebounding of “Rogues” in a way you might miss had they not been on the same stage together. It was a smart close to a program that surefootedly balanced pop and art.